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Sony NW-E50

By David McAmis on 30 November 2004

With a long battery life and features traditionally found on larger, more expensive players, the NW-E50 is a packed little powerhouse of MP3 playing power.

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Sony NW-E50 David McAmis 30th Nov 2004 With a long battery life and features traditionally found on larger, more expensive players, the NW-E50 is a packed little powerhouse of MP3 playing power. Sony MP3 Players Sony NW-E50 With a long battery life and features traditionally found on larger, more expensive players, the NW-E50 is a packed little powerhouse of MP3 playing power.

• Good: Tiny, compact design • Good feature set • Impressive battery life
• Bad: Memory capacity won't store many MP3s •
• Specs: Flash • 128MB • No • See more specifications
• RRP: AU$299.00

Photo gallery: Sony NW-E50

The NW-E50 is testament to "less is more" as this player is only a little larger than a matchbox. With a long battery life and features traditionally found on larger, more expensive players, the NW-E50 is a packed little powerhouse of MP3 playing power.

Design
It is definitely the right size for people on the move, as it could easily be tucked into a shirt pocket or arm band. The 2-colour backlit screen is small but serviceable and it is easy to read and can display the group or album, as well as the song title. There is a "jog dial" on the corner of the unit that can be used to jog and shuttle between tracks and this takes some getting used. However, once you get the hang of it, you will love the control it gives out. Instead of searching for tiny buttons (on an equally tiny button) the jog dial brings the most commonly used functionality to your fingertips.

Features
The NW-E50 has 128MB of flash memory, which can hold up to 6 CDs of music using the ATRAC3plus format, (which most users will either love or hate). You can also play MP3 files, but note that 128MB will hold a lot fewer MP3 files.

The unit comes with a USB cable for transferring music across, along with Sony's SonicStage software, of which I am not a great fan but it does what it needs to do. It can rip CD tracks to ATRAC3plus format quickly and has a simple user interface, so it shouldn't be too difficult to pick up.

Performance
The user manual touts that you can get 70 hours of continuous playback on a single AAA battery and while I didn't stay up for 70 hours straight to find out, I was amazed at the battery life, as over two days of near continuous play, the sound was still clear and crisp.

My one complaint is that the Sonic Stage software did not install correctly on my computer in the first instance and I had to remove it and re-install it. On the first install, it would crash the program whenever you dragged a sound file from the computer to the player. This can be frustrating for first-time users, but you will need their software installed to make the most of the player.

Still, even with software problems, it is a solid performer and packs a lot of features for its size.

Topics: mp3, sony, wma, flash, player, 128mb, nw-e50, atrac3, jog dial, continuous

• 

  Anonymous gave 10/10 on 04/09/2006 22:18 Report abuse

  This player is just stunning

  • Good: The quality of sound is very good, it is compatible and is very convenient to use
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  Anonymous gave 1/10 on 28/12/2005 10:13 Report abuse

  Xcellent sound

  I've been using NW E50 for over 6months now & feel it is an ultimate player placked in a small device. The quality of sound is awesome & the size of it is unmatchable.

• 

  Anonymous gave a review on 18/11/2005 08:18 Report abuse

  mp4

  I cant seem to add any of my cd's onto it coz they are MP4's

• 

  aweslick gave a review on 03/07/2005 09:15 Report abuse

  dont waste your money

  sonicstage the software it comes with has many bug's. Do your self a favor and buy an iriver or any other player that actually works out of the box

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  Anonymous gave 1/10 on 05/05/2005 16:50 Report abuse

  No complaints here!

  Seeing I just picked it up for $99 I can't complain. Using Sound quality of ATRAC3 48khz and using the same headphones I cannot hear the difference between it and my 196Khz MP3s. Maybe I don't have good ears, but can't tell. My wife is low-tech and she's able to use the software easily to get things done, so that's a plus.

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  yappy gave 1/10 on 13/01/2005 00:34 Report abuse

  Exactly what I wanted

  I was looking for a small light weight player, with good sound quality, to accompany me on my morning jogs. After comparing price, quality, weight, size and built quality...I went for the NW-E50.
  
  The Sonic Stage is easy to use and Atrac3 gives good sound quality. Best of all, files sizes are small so I can put loads of songs in the 128mb package.
  
  The built quality is good and solid. The weight and size is perfect. Fits into my jogging pants and I can run without feeling its presence. Happy with this tiny fella.

• 

  psdiao gave 1/10 on 09/01/2005 16:50 Report abuse

  You don't know what you're missing out on!

  The NW-E70 with 256MB would be a better option, but this player is far superior to any others on the market (even the iPod). Designed to store enough music for one or two days, the battery life contradicts this however, with the ATRAC3 format even more music can be stored. The ATRAC format was clearly designed with SonyBMG's interests in mind, however slow it might be, it offers much better quality at 48kbps then most MP3s at 128kbps, the initial time spent convertng the music is worth the space savings and quality gains( only if you have music on CD). Anyway most people that say ATRAC has bad quality and is annoying should start paying for there music. if you download a track thatis at a certain quality the program cannot interpolate the missing notes now can it?

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  Anonymous gave 1/10 on 07/12/2004 15:41 Report abuse

  ATRAC better than MP3's

  Sony's ATRAC technology is actually a better encoding format than MP3. At comparable resolutions (bitrates) it is simply better. Its used by Media Companies as their Archive format of choice.
  
  This is a great little unit if not a Bit Pricy!!! Battery life is a Plus!!!

• 

  Ultima160 gave a review on 04/12/2004 15:14 Report abuse

  Atrac3 = Concrete Shoes for Sony

  The problem with this player is the fact that is utilizes Atrac3, Sony's proprietary audio format. Atrac's sound quality is lesser than mp3 and for $299, you could spend an extra $50 and get an iPod Mini with extra space and the coolness factor that Sony seems to have left behind.

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  Michael, NSW gave 1/10 on 02/12/2004 13:47 Report abuse

  It's so cool! I've had mine for a week and I still haven't replaced the battery!

  This is awesome, I'm using ATRAC3 instead of MP3 cause the manual says my battery will last longer with ATRAC3, I've had it for a week and been listening to it alot, but I still haven't had to replace the battery! I've put a cool mix of my fav songs from my Cd collection on it and its seriously like having a radio station that plays just the music I like really loud, just the way I like it!
  
  Cool machine, I'd reccomend it to everyone. The sound is magic.
  Nice one Sony!!!